Hey everyone....just my 2 cents on the complaints that I have heard about Beckett's website over the past several years.

I don't mean to go off on a rant here, but...Beckett's site is THE best place to trade. It has been slow here lately, so I thought I would try another site for new "trading blood". The one positive was that I did get many responses to a trade post. The HUGE negative was that it TAKES FREAKING FOREVER to trade.

People would reply "hey - what do you have in Cleveland Indians?" I had to manually get a list together - by typing, or by copy and pasting....the list has to be generated somehow. I don't know about you, but I can't list ALL or even SOME of my Indians cards quickly. This takes time and time, and then more time....searching for cards, typing, etc. It will take me days to fully reply to everyone that replied to my post of the other site. Also - people would say, hey check my bucket. Going through buckets takes time too. Plus, if I need that certain 1990's regular issue card of someone, who's gonna have a pic of that in their bucket? NOBODY.

That is what I like about Beckett.com. You have work up front, loading all of your cards in the system....but once you do that, trades are FAST. I have learned much over the years and loading cards doesn't really take that long. The trade feature, coupled with the organize feature and OPG is freaking priceless. I have a wife and 3 kids (14, 11, 8)......I don't have too much free time. Time is like gold to me.

You can go through people's inventory and search by any word you want...also search by team and player. You can even search by team AND player if you only want Roger Clemens in Blue Jays uniforms. You instantly see what other people have that fits your criteria. If you load your collections properly, you can even see a "STAR" next to the cards the other person has that you want to trade for. Being a player collector - this is awesome.

Yes, the site has been slow lately......but man is it WAAAAAY faster than doing it manually. When you try to make a trade on another site, what do you do to compare trade values???? You go to BECKETT.COM and look it up. In the Beckett trade feature, the book values ARE RIGHT THERE and they even add it all up for all you math wizards!! When I had to get that list of Indians players, I came to my Beckett account and started a "dummy" trade and searched my organize for Indians cards. A list of hundreds came up in two seconds. I had to copy and paste that list into the other site. Took me several minutes because I had formatting issues to deal with when I pasted into the other site. But the main idea of this story is I still had to use my Beckett account to trade somewhere else. Why go anywhere else? Stay here, trade here.....simple. I am sold and what I went through today just solidified it.

But that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.

Always trading for Barry Larkin. Currently have 1869 different out of 3875 total cards.

I'm new to all of this so I've never even tried to trade, but I have noticed this site is really slow sometimes. Is it because of too many pictures uploaded or something else? At first I thought my computer was being slow. Either way I don't mind too much, I like this place, just wondering why it was so slow at times.

I just joined another site. I don't understand how anyone gets any trading done there. I asked one guy what price they go by when trading and he said you just work it out. So I do my trading here. It's way easier.

Never tried trading on any site, but i've just renewed my subscription here, because it's pretty easy and organize has worked out well for me .... And anyone who knows me, knows I need all the help organizing that I can get.
Since I joined, I've probably used the site on a daily basis. I started on the Forum about a year ago, and enjoy the people here. I've learned a lot from the forum folks, too.
The speed issue was annoying, but the last 2-3 days, Beckett has been moving along quite well.
Regards,
Mitch

Avatar and Banner courtesy of jbel4331. THANKS!
Topps should send me Flowers and Candy this Valentine's Day, because they've been screwing me pretty regularly throughout the year.

-For what it's worth, the site has been running a lot faster form me this past week. Also, out of curiosity, I checked out another baseball card trading site a few months back. (Rhymes with "wrench"). The site was confusing and I couldn't figure out how to initiate trades, other than just posting my wants on some jumbled thread.

Personally, I've never had too much of a beef with Beckett. It's been good to me and I've met a lot of great traders along the way (over 150 trades in the last year). I think there's a few tweaks that Beckett could make that would be a home run and which I'm hopeful will come someday. (Like ghosting out cards you already have when you're looking at someone's cards*; making cards more easily sortable by card value)

*It's can be frustrating toggling back and forth between my Org and my trader's Org (in trade view) to see whether he has any cards I need.

I agree the OPG database is a great tool as long as you keep it under the 100 card limit to keep it free. Other than that though the whole site needs a major overhaul. I much prefer Blowout for trading and selling there are just a lot more people on that site and you get more looks and responses. You can make the same post here and there and in the time it takes to get 5 responses here you have probably 25-30 there if not more.

If Blowout ever comes up with a database checklist and makes it free this site is toast as simple as that.

(01-11-2013 01:04 AM)chevy man 22 Wrote: If Blowout ever comes up with a database checklist and makes it free this site is toast as simple as that.

Given how much time and money went into develop what Beckett has built, I think that's a long shot at best.

Hands down, Beckett is my preferred trading destination. The site has been running much better for me over the past week too, and while I fully acknowledge that the site is a lot quieter than it has been in the past, I think we should be encouraging new members to join and keeping things more positive here to encourage folks to stick around and become part of the community. That doesn't mean we shouldn't expect good service and functionality and let it be heard when that's not happening, but we should speak of such things in the right places.

I actually think it's a benefit to having to pay to use org and trade here as for the most part folks on here are passionate and committed to the hobby. There are bad eggs, as there are everywhere, and it's unfortunate when one of them drives anyone away, but overall I find the Beckett community to be filled with better trade partners than are available elsewhere, that's why I'll be sticking around.

Speak positively of the folks who are here and more good folks will join us.